Echo Collective—The See Within

Echo Collective is the first solo album of original material from neo-classical journeymen Echo Collective. Though their name may be unfamiliar to many, their work is not; past collaborations include Johann Johannsson’s 12 Conversations with Thilo Heinzmann and Christina Vantzou’s superb N. 4. Throughout the past few years, Echo Collective have made a name for themselves not just as technical masters, but as intuitive, adaptable and generous artists.

If, from that, you think you’ve worked out how The See Within sounds, you’re wrong. It is a delicate, controlled album—but it’s a far cry from the quantised assembly-line beauty of someone like Nils Frahm. It’s miles away from anyone else, too. Echo Collective don’t just get their socks off; they fully commit to an approach which uses no post-processing or production techniques (besides reverb). This doesn’t feel like an appeasement to fetishists of analogue media, shelves overflowing with digitally-mastered vinyl. It instead betrays a love of form, musicianship and experimentation. That the album’s relatively untouched performances feel so tactile is just a wonderful bonus.

In some cases, production on The See Within becomes as compelling to engage with as the music itself—‘Glitch’, as anomalous in the tracklist as its name suggests, sounds like a rank of chattering computer consoles, or a quasi-orchestral rendering of mobile phone interference.

And even when instruments are identifiable, their use is novel enough to defamiliarise. ‘The Witching Hour’ melts away through its runtime into a Shepard tone of descending portamentos, every instrument on the track seeming to wilt as it is played. Even the album’s title feels like a magic trick—substituting one vowel to create a phrase which is both funny and mysterious. In moments like these, The See Within survives the spirit of film pioneer Méliès. The trick is simple, but so much fun you never try to work it out.

The See Within is available for download and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Benjamin Finger & James Plotkin—We Carry the Curse

Claire Denis’ 2018 film High Life saw humankind colonise space with its darkest and most self-interested impulses. The film juggled tenderness and brutality, hope and nihilism—a curious tone which extended into its minimal score, courtesy of Tindersticks alumnus Stuart A. Staples. There is some shared DNA between Staples’ work and the latest collaborative LP from Benjamin Finger and James Plotkin, We Carry the Curse. Both are stargazing music—but they divide their attention between the stars’ brilliance and what Robert Frost once called the “empty spaces” in between.

Black is a yielding, vacuous colour. Many fear the dark because this vacuity accommodates pre-existing fears—if you are terrified of spiders, your imagination may infest a dark space with them. Our minds wander freely before sleep, because in the unobserved darkness of night we need fear no judgement. Music can be the same way—and with We Carry the Curse, vacuity and darkness allow a depth of contemplation that more active forms may not. The album relishes in stillness, cavernousness, and dark mystification. One listener may find the album deeply strange or disconcerting—another may just as easily find hope, clarity and relaxation.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see a huge wave of younger listeners soon turn towards gestural music like We Carry the Curse. A generation seeking self-actualisation may find comfort in art which doesn’t tell you the right or wrong way to think. Not only can you luxuriate in its formal beauty, you are afforded space to undergo your own spiritual/emotional/intellectual journey—rather than be dictated to by more traditional songwriting, often as confused in its affiliations as it is vocal.

There is more than a passing resemblance between We Carry the Curse and A Silver Mt. Zion’s 2000 album He Has Left Us Alone…. Finger and Plotkin’s title track, in particular, evokes the spirit of Efrim & co. with its wounded strings, funereal plod and crunchy guitar drones. We Carry the Curse gets similar mileage from its tension as A Silver Mt. Zion’s work; restless, refusing to boil over but refusing to slow its simmer. Both artists allow the analogue and electric to collide in an uncomfortable clash—generating a spectral bridging effect between the past and the present. It is as though the bows and strings of dead players are calling from the grave. Albeit terrestrial this time, rather than in the far-flung reaches of space, ghosts represent the same vacuum—unseen, and of indeterminable morality. The title We Carry the Curse is really a question in disguise. Into what empty spaces are we carrying it?

We Carry the Curse is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Dylan Henner—The Invention of the Human

Dylan Henner’s The Invention of the Human feels like mallsoft of a deserted future. It is a suite of synthesis, which sings in garbled voices to empty rooms. Its new-agey choral minimalism can best be described as glacial. This owes not only to a measured pace, but a powerful tension as chords slide over each other in creaking and reluctant transition. There is such stillness to this album that its each greedy moment seeks to hold you forever.

It’s useful to discuss The Invention of the Human through its vocals. Voices are ever-present but computer synthesised, and then even further processed into abhuman weirdness; slowed, downpitched or swamped with delay. It’s like listening through thick water; recognisable, but refracted, askew and alien. The sound is organic but equally suggests transhumanism—a chorus staying its breath in anticipation of the future.

Vocals also recall some works of the past. Closer ‘We Could Hear Them Singing…’ surprises with Daft Punk-style vocoder effects—but supplements its sound with faint ecclesiasticism, shades of a prayer bell burbling beneath the surface.  ‘The Peach Tree Next Door…’ and ‘The Lake was Covered in Lilypads’ both feature staccato vocals as percussion, in the style of Philip Glass. ‘…Lilypads’ impresses in particular, its peppering of vocal delay mimicking the perpetually-accelerating rhythm of a bouncy ball. The track disintegrates at its midpoint, before reforming for an acidic and overdriven coda. It is anchored by a gorgeous chord sequence, the sole element of the track which continues throughout its length.

This happens a number of times in The Invention of the Human, a sole thread sitting concrete amidst amorphous elements.  The album subtly evolves and self-corrects, undergoing slow but drastic and sometimes painful changes—but you don’t really notice it happening in the moment. You could see this as an optimistic reflection of our natures—both on a personal and a global level. Our history is a long series of misguided acts, some species-wide endemic flaw forcing our errors. But follow the thread and we see change and development blossoming around the mistakes. The album’s cover encapsulates this idea well; a machine-learning replica of pre-Guttenberg illuminated text. As the internet hastens a second incunabula, how will humans of five hundred years from now regard us?

The Invention of the Human is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Hiro Kone — A Fossil Begins to Bray

The work of producer Hiro Kone (Nicky Mao) is reliably muscular and haptic. Over several releases Mao has shown talent and consistency. A Fossil Begins to Bray finds Mao transformed but intact. It builds on foundations set by its predecessors, but neither betrays nor leaves them in the dust. 

As suggested by its title, the album bursts from stolid and intermittent silences. Life erupts from nowhere. Wobbly rhythms, bright synth work and a menacing low end scream into being; relics rendered animate. 

The title track of A Fossil Begins to Bray forms like an organism emerging from primordial soup. From stuttering silence and calm, the track blossoms into a cacophonous roar. It builds to an abrupt cut, a story suddenly swiped from the table. In a few minutes, Mao manages a wordless evocation of a species’ span on the planet. 

‘Akoluthic Phase’ has a similar structure. What begins akin to Eduard Artemyev’s mysterious work for Tarkovsky heaves out of the sea and sprouts a propulsive, powerline-twang of a bassline. Its pensive mode accelerates into danger and fierce action.

It’s impressive how often Mao repeats this trick in different ways. A standout is ‘Shatter the Gangue of Piety’, a lurching epic peppered with inhuman signs and industrial clanging. It’s the most monstrous track here: like Depeche Mode but fracked, blasted into deconstruction and drained of black blood. 

Mao’s M.O. appears to be a rejection of modernity and accelerationism; an ode to quiet and to hesitance. It’s not some Luddite manifesto — more a work which tenders reflection on the structures which support us. The weight of history held in our future.

The most overt example of this is ‘Submerged Dragons’, a transitory minimalist track which lapses into frequent silence. It is filled with tension; a penny awaiting the drop. What a friend of mine would call ‘silence so loud you want to turn it up’. This track and its peers are something to ring the ears with more than once. 

Hiro Kone’s A Fossil Begins to Bray is available for stream and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Lorenzo Gómez Oviedo — Cielo

Cielo is a rapturous upward journey. In its treatment of death and ascension it takes notes from Eliane Radigue's seminal Trilogie De La Mort. Both works tug in movements so slow as to be near imperceptible. Both produce an illusory perennial tone; a note which feels singular but is in constant flux. When change is present it is gradual, even glacial. It serves the purpose of feigning changelessness.

Cielo may be passive and unshowy. But it offers much to be unpacked. Like a canvas painted one solid colour, it grants more the longer it is considered. Gómez Oviedo's rumbles, scrapes and drones both fill and offer space at the same time.

Drone can in its minimalism engender a wandering mind. Cielo, no exception, invites technical consideration in its quietest moments. Listeners may try to identify the sounds from which Cielo was manipulated into being. They may venture to guess the processes those sounds underwent. This springs not from disengagement but an attempt to apprehend the album's striking production. And it never swamps the emotive force of the album. Cielo balances between a contemplative mode and experiential, Dionysian bliss with ease.

Violin work from Valentina Spina dances over the surface of Gómez Oviedo's drones like notonecta glauca, a trill which fades airily in and out of the mix. Like so much of what works in Cielo, it's a tiny but vital element elevating the whole.

Drone is so often about balancing these elements — light but not bare, empty but not hollow. Removal or addition of the smallest element crumbles the tower. Cielo strikes a superb balance, looming high amongst its peers.

Cielo is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe